New Arkansas Cinema Society aims to unite film buffs

Arkansas and its capital city Little Rock have made their contributions to cinema.

Newport native Mary Steenburgen is an Oscar winner; Wes Bentley (American Beauty), Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy), Dick Powell (Murder, My Sweet) and Alan Ladd (Shane) also hail from the Natural State. Arkansas has also produced award winning directors Jeff Nichols (Loving) and Jay Russell (My Dog Skip) and served as the location and setting for Boxcar Bertha, the first studio movie Martin Scorsese helmed.

It's also the home of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and unique venues like the Riverdale 10 and the Ron Robinson Theater, where films like My Scientology Movie and 1984 reach audiences that multiplexes ignore.

Because Arkansans enjoy challenging films as well as standard issue blockbusters, it's somewhat surprising that Arkansas Cinema Society announced its formation last week. Their board consists of Steenburgen, former Gov. Mike Beebe, Alison Williams (chief of staff for Gov. Asa Hutchinson) and Graham Gordy, co-creator of the Cinemax series Antiquities, which was shot in the Land of Opportunity last fall. Nichols chairs the board.

According to Cinema Society executive director Kathryn Tucker, who produced the film All the Birds Have Flown South and who graduated from Little Rock Central High, "We wanted to support that film community that they built up and provide a place for the film community to commune. We've been working on the best way to bring back the Little Rock Film Festival ever since it closed its doors in the fall of 2015.

"I ran into Jeff [Nichols] at the Loving screening that he generously hosted as a fundraiser for Little Rock Central High School in November," Tucker says. "I told him I had a group of people assembled to bring the festival back, and he said, 'Let's do something even better than a festival.'

"And he sort of pitched to me his idea for what is now the Arkansas Cinema Society. He's to do a festival as part of the organization but also do so much more. He's very complimentary of the Austin [Texas] Film Society."

Nichols currently lives in Austin, which has a thriving movie community, and says the city has a lot to teach Arkansas filmmakers and fans on how to maximize the region's potential. The Austin Film Society often provides support for other movie organizations.

"There's the Bentonville Film Festival. There's the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. There's the El Dorado Film Festival, Fayetteville. There's the Film Society in Little Rock. We don't really want any of these film organizations to feel competition with us. We want to support them and any like-minded events," Tucker says.

"I've already contacted the Bentonville Film Festival. We haven't gotten the OK to start partnering with them. We want to partner with all of these festivals so that the right hand is talking to the left hand. So instead of doing two medium events, let's do one great one."

Tucker and Nichols have discussed holding screenings of movies like the Oscar-winning Moonlight in outdoor settings where the film might not be seen otherwise and partnering with other organizations for similar special screenings. She says that Ron Robinson is where the society would like to headquarter a potential Little Rock Film Festival in August 2018 and even potentially set up a multi-use facility for special screenings or even possibly bring filmmakers like Scorsese back for special screenings throughout the year.

"My biggest priority is to create a statewide, stable film society that will unify all the different parts of the state and all the different factions of the filmmakers so that we can help one another and connect all of these new and existing filmmakers to the industry," she says.

MovieStyle on 03/31/2017

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